The King and the Servant
by jayilyse
Summary: What is wrong with you, Rose Lalonde? No, that is alright. Keep staring. You are sure she will not notice. In fact, stare harder. Maybe, if you stare hard enough, you will be able to see past her into a different dimension.


What is wrong with you, Rose Lalonde?

No, that is alright. Keep staring. You are sure she will not notice. In fact, stare harder. Maybe, if you stare hard enough, you will be able to see past her into a different dimension.

God damn it, can you just not be sarcastic for one second? A millisecond even – why do you need to be sarcastic with yourself?

Oh, no need to lie to yourself too. You know the answer to that. You know all several answers to that. Perhaps you should stop staring at the one known as Kanaya Maryam as you wander down the paths of your thought processes – all of which you have gone through before, yet there is nothing else to do on this meteor. There is literally nothing else to do. Research can only be done for so long before you need to do something else. You are only human, after all – well fuck; now she is looking at you. She caught you staring. You got so lost in the tangents of your thoughts that you never managed to look away. Alright, Rose. Play it cool. Smile – no, smirk. Look down at the book in your lap. Pretend you meant to do that. Good job. You did what you wanted to do in the first place – look away.

It is a miracle she has not figured it out yet. Even if she has, you are pretty sure she would not ask about it unless it was a dire emergency. That is something you are eternally grateful for.

The book that is weighing your legs down at the moment is not even interesting anymore. You have read it over and over again. Even still, you pretend you are very interested in this book. You skim the words mindlessly, not even bothering to read them and try to understand them anymore. They are just a mesh of letters, a mishmash of punctuation, and a hodgepodge of confusing phrases that you have already deciphered time and time again.

You were thinking about something, were you not?

Oh, yes. The reasons why you are so dreadfully sarcastic is the thing you were thinking about.

You suppose you should just pick a random one. They all lead into each other anyway.

It could just be a habit. It is very probable, considering that you were even sarcastic with your closest friends.

That might be part of it; however, there are reasons that combine with that.

It might be sentimental. Your planet is gone, and so are most things that you have ever loved. Even the mother that you never actually told you loved her after the age of eight. Your old life is gone, and it is most likely never going to come back. This could be your way of clinging on to the old so that you do not lose yourself once again. So you are not so overwhelmed. Like a defense mechanism, of sorts.

A defense mechanism.

As always, previous, shallower reasoning has led you to what you believe is the truth of the matter.

You do not want to let anyone in to see the real you.

You have made it your job to know what is going on with you and your emotions. So you could keep them in check. Grim Dark is not going to happen again. Not on your watch.

You have never had a handle on emotions. Logic is king, and emotion has always been his lowly servant in the background of the palace that is your mind. One day, this servant caused a coup and you had no idea how to stop it. You could not stop it, actually. It was bound to happen. Sure you psychoanalyzed person after person, noticing what happens when emotions bottle up. The answer is that people break. But knowledge is power. Knowledge put you one step above everyone else, right?

Wrong.

You are human – so unmistakably, irredeemably human. They say the first step to stopping something is admitting to it. You never admitted to it. You never even gave emotion a second thought. You thought you were above it. Well, actually, no. Strike that. You did not think you were above it. You cannot even remember what you thought about it because you barely thought about it at all.

It was still your downfall, though.

You broke. You broke harder than anyone you had ever seen fall to pieces, in retrospect. Here you are now, just picking up piece after piece of yourself – and hating what you see. How could you – you, who prided yourself on knowing the human mind and its infinite mazes and tangles of webbing – have ignored yourself?

You do not want to let yourself in to see the real you.

You suppose this is the time where you try to reassure yourself. The time where you say "it happens to the best of us". It is true; there is no point in dwelling on it. There is no point when you are doing your best to not let it happen again. There is just little else to do.

You allow yourself a glance up at the person – well, troll – nearby. She is working on cutting some fabric you alchemized her earlier in the day. You can see a small frown edging its way onto her face. Her brows are furrowing slightly, and her fangs seem to be plunging themselves into her lips. Not deeply enough to cause her to bleed, of course. It is probably just because she is concentrating. Or is it because she is worried about something? She tends to do that when she is worried, as well. You go back to your book.

Since you have made it your job to know what is going on with you, you noticed very quickly, if not immediately, that you have some romantic inclination towards this female. You ponder the reasons why romantic emotion has to come with so much more physical affliction. Sure, other emotions can make someone's heart race. Sure, other emotions can make someone's blood rush to their head. Just not as much as romantic love does. It is all foreign to you, really. You never had a crush on anyone on Earth. You probably would have ignored it, if you did.

It is just too hard to ignore now – besides, you are not allowed to, remember? Repression is what led you to be Grim Dark. Repression caused you to break. The least you can do is acknowledge them to yourself. Acknowledge that every time you are near her you can feel your heart against your ribcage. Acknowledge how your stomach does these awkward flips and twirls, threatening to cave in, when she accidentally touches your hand while you are both perusing an ancient tome together. Yes, you need to acknowledge it. It is unavoidable.

Your precious Kanaya, however, does not need to know.

There are reasons, many reasons, why her knowing is ill-advised.

Most, if not all, are completely selfish on your part.

Suppose she does not share in your feelings. Suppose she turns you down. It would become awkward and that is not needed when you have another year on this meteor. You do not even know what you would do in that situation.

Suppose she does share in your feelings. What then? Get attached – let your feelings bloom into something you probably would never feel otherwise? There is nothing particularly wrong with that.

At least, if it were not for the situation you are in.

You are going head first into a part of the game that has never been tested before. You are combining a null session and a void session. There are high possibilities that you will die. That is fine, as long as you do not die heroically or justly. You will come back if it is not a death that fits into the aforementioned categories.

She will not.

She can die, and you will not even be able to turn her God Tier to save her. You do not know where her quest bed is. You do not know if it would even be there in an entirely different session.

She can die. You know this all too well. You do not know what you would do without her at this point. It hurts you to think about.

What happens if you can save her from death and you die in the process? Then you die. You die permanently. There is no coming back. There will be no protecting her again.

This is why it would not be prudent to act on your feelings. This is why you can never act on them, really. This is why you have to keep your calm, elusive manners around her. You cannot risk losing her. You cannot risk losing her in any sense of the word. She is the glow to your dim light. She is the moon that helps control your tides in the event of rain. She is the reason you are trying to keep control at all, at this point.

She is your hope.

You decide to take a trip down memory lane. Kanaya tried to stop you from doing what you were about to do. It was a sweet gesture. Those sweet gestures continued when you finally got settled on the meteor. Without fail, she proved that she would do as much as she could to make you happy. She is an amazing friend. She gives you space and seclusion when you need it. She gives you company when you want it. You even indulge her when she offers to make you outfits, though the fitting for the clothing is always horrible for you. The slight heat when she touches you – the obvious blush that you cannot hide in a book because you are standing like a scarecrow that got crucified. It is the moment where you contradict yourself. The moment where King Logic once again faces his servant in an ongoing battle after he resumed his throne. The servant wants to reach out to Kanaya. He wants a hug. He wants a kiss. He wants to cuddle while watching one of those stupid RomComs that Karkat always watches. He wants to be sincere instead of sarcastic. The servant just wants to know someone will be there.

The king knows what is best, though. The king knows why it is not prudent.

So you refrain.

You are tired of thinking. So you close the book with a satisfying slam. It was alarmingly quiet in here with just you and your thoughts. It is nice to hear something else. However, it shocked Kanaya. She jolts upright from her bent position over the fabric and looks at you. Her expression softens as she realizes it was just the book. She smiles at you.

"That was quite the scare."

"Sorry to have scared you, Kanaya." You offer with a smirk.

You set the book on the floor, uncross your legs, and stand. You stretch your legs for a moment. They are numb. So you pick up the book, and walk around pretending to get another one and seemingly changing your mind. You put the book back where it belongs, highly aware that Kanaya is watching you carefully.

Turning toward her, you give her a nod. It is your usual signal that you are off to bed. Her face is once again one of deep concentration or worry. You walk past her, briefly brushing against her side as you do. You are a foot or two away from her when she says something.

"Rose?"

You stop in your tracks. The idiotic thing you call a heart skips a beat. You do not dare turn toward her.

"Yes?"

There is a moment of silence. A silence filled with tension and perhaps something else. Perhaps a not-so-secret want on your part for her to say what your heart is longing to hear – what your brain is dreading. The silence deepens as you wait for her to say something.

"…Goodnight. Sleep well."

Your heart drops, but your head celebrates. You cannot tell if you are crestfallen or not.

"You too, Kanaya."

You transportalize out of the room.

You know tonight is going to be longer than usual.


End file.
